Are You Sure Colorado Only Has Four Sides?

I realize it's been 40 years since I took Colorado History in high school, but I have never questioned the fact that I live in a four-sided state - until now.

Whenever you look at Colorado on a United States map, you see four sides, and each side is a straight line. The problem is, what we are seeing is not entirely accurate.

Colorado is one of only three states that have borders defined by longitude and latitude lines. However, surveyors in the 19th century, apparently made several mistakes, which means the legal borders of Colorado are much different than what was originally designed by Congress. Of course, they didn't have internet, GPS, or other modern tools to make their calculations.

The result is that, while Colorado may look like a rectangle, it's not. It's actually a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon, with 697 sides, or edges, based on calculations on the geographic website QGIS.

It's doubtful that anyone will lose any sleep over the reported errors in Colorado's geography, nor should they. This is not a huge deal, but it is extremely interesting to see what Colorado's border should be compared to the reality of how they actually exist today.